Newcastle United didn’t have the happiest of matches in Germany on Wednesday, drawing 2-2 with Bayer Leverkusen. Whilst the result itself isn’t so bad, missing out on three points is the difference between them being in the top eight right now or not.
Things didn’t get off to a great start with Bruno Guimarães’ own goal. Newcastle United fought back from that, with goals from Anthony Gordon and Lewis Miley.
Unfortunately for Eddie Howe’s side, a late equaliser from Alex Grimaldo snatched a point for Bayer Leverkusen.
Newcastle United now find themselves 12th in the Champions League table, with the Bundesliga club 20th.
After the match, German newspaper Bild rated the performances.
Whilst most ratings are out of 10, or sometimes 5, Bild use the German school grading system. 1 means very good, 2 is good, 3 is average, 4 is passable but still lacking, 5 is deficient and 6 is insufficient. A 6 is the lowest possible grade and, taking it back to the school grades, it means that not only were things not up to standard, but there was even a failure to understand the basics.
Two players were given a 5 and therefore deemed ‘deficient’. Those were Guimarães and Mark Flekken.
The best performer on the pitch, for Bild, was 20-year-old Ibrahim Maza. He got the rarely given 1.
Interestingly, he’s been linked to multiple Premier League clubs this year, including Newcastle United.
